There’s been a lot of commentary about the lack of women in comedy, but one of the truly under-represented groups is the Asian community.
I’m thinking about this because this month I had the pleasure of working with Sheng Wang, a rising new star of American stand-up. Wang was born in Taipei, raised in Houston and “pays rent” in New York City. His act is dry, hip and laconic. There’s barely a reference to the immigrant drama of most second generation Americans. If anything, he seems assimilated to the point of being ahead of the cultural curve.
Wang has had the obligatory Comedy Central special, he’s performed at Just For Laughs, and NBC gave him a rare holding deal last year. He is modern, post-racial, more of an Aziz Ansari than a Russell Peters — there isn’t an obvious racial joke in his entire act.
I’m also thinking about the issue because I just opened a new Yuk Yuk’s in Vancouver, a city that seems to epitomize Pacific Rim culture. I saw 20 new comics in a local showcase and four of them were Asian. Two years ago, there were only two Asian comics in the entire city, Paul Bae and Jeffrey Yu, both excellent stand-ups that kept secure day jobs. Add to the list Julie Kim, a transplant from Toronto.
All of the aforementioned are of Korean heritage, as is one of Toronto’s leading Asian stand-ups, John Ki. I’ve been told that the Korean community is more assimilated to the traditions of Western culture. Oh, and the very popular comic Margaret Cho? Also Korean.
There isn’t much of a stand-up tradition in that part of the world. The Japanese have a culture so stratified by social convention that sheer physical slapstick bordering on humiliation seems to be the comedy that’s popular. I remember seeing the Tokyo Shock Boys at Just For Laughs years ago. Incredibly violent yet enormously popular in their home country, they were just too strange to conquer North America.
There’s no real stand-up tradition in China either, where comedy is expressed through “double-talk” routines reminiscent of Abbott and Costello. Amazingly, one of the biggest stars of the form is a Canadian, Mark Rowswell, known as Dashan.
I asked John Ki for his insights, and he noted that family ties count so much for Asians that no child would want to disappoint his parents by entering such an economically ephemeral career as comedy. (Actually, my parents weren’t too thrilled about it either.)
Nevertheless, there are always those willing to break with tradition. There’s a new group of comics with roots in the Philippines making waves in North America. Jo Koy can sell out theatres now, and here in Canada, Ron Josol, Art Factora and Keith Pedro are hot on the circuit.
But if you’ve never seen Chinese-American Byron Yee, you should. His one-man show, Paper Son, won the San Francisco Fringe Festival and has gone on to acclaim all over the continent. More ethnic still is Joe Wong. Wong’s immigrant-based comedy can seem dated and all too reminiscent of Yakov Smirnoff’s Russian shtick from the ’80s, but the fact that he’s Chinese and it’s never been done before makes it fresh.
He’s the opposite of Sheng Wang, but they both have something in common — a new voice in comedy.
